Running a 1000-Head Sheep and Goat Farm with Throf: Team Roadmap

This guide is for the owner of a commercial sheep or goat farm of about 1000 head, working with a supervisor and several workers. It gives you a full Throf setup plan, from before go-live to a steady routine: every worker records from their phone, and you see the day's work, groups, stages, breeding, health, feed, money and reports in one place.

At this size the flock can no longer run on memory or on the supervisor's notebook. You have many pens, planned breeding seasons, lambing waves, batches of lambs to sell, culls to move out and sometimes a special batch for Eid al-Adha. The daily question is not just "how many do I have?" but "who did what today, which pen costs me most, and when does this group lamb?"

The 1000-head farm at a glance

To be clear about the plan: your farm is a little above the Company plan limit, and your team is usually larger than 3 employees. So request a quote from the plans page with the «Request a quote» button, or call +966 920033734. The Throf team will prepare an offer that fits your headcount and team size, and enable web access with your subscription.

What you need to track

• Live count per group and stage: how many in each pen, how many pregnant, lactating, fattening, and how many breeding rams or bucks.
• Mating, pregnancy and births: who was mated and when, who is close to lambing (sheep gestation is about 147 days, goats about 150), twins, and miscarriages.
• Deaths and isolation: how many died this month, in which pen, and how many animals are isolated right now.
• Health programme: group vaccinations following your local vet's schedule, treatments and reminders.
• Feed: stock in kg, daily use, and when you need to buy.
• Money: expenses, sales, net profit and cost per head.

Step-by-step roadmap

Before go-live

1. Prepare an Excel file of the flock: for each animal its number and tag colour (the pair is the animal's identity), breed, sex, birth date and pen. Add mother and father where known. Then import the whole file into Throf instead of entering animals one by one.
2. Create groups that match reality: name each group as your pens are named on the farm (Ewes 1, Rams, Weaned lambs, Fattening, Isolation). Throf also classifies animals automatically by age and sex: unweaned, young stock, adults, mothers and breeding males.
3. Put each group in its stage: instead of editing animals one by one, use "change stage" for a whole group: this group is pregnant, that one is fattening, this one is weaned.

Week 1

1. Add employees and permissions: each worker gets their own account. Give the supervisor wider rights and each worker only what they need: recording meals, health and births, without deleting or seeing finance if you prefer. Throf has more than 50 fine-grained permissions, and one employee can work on several farms.
2. Assign tasks: create daily tasks in the app (feed the fattening pen, check pregnant ewes, vaccinate a group) and assign each one to a worker, who sees it on their phone.
3. Start feeding and feed stock records: enter current stock in kg, then workers record meals per group, so the stock goes down and you know when to reorder.
4. Connect the RFID reader if you use electronic tags: pair a Bluetooth RFID reader from the app; reading a tag opens the animal's file directly, which saves a lot of time at weighing and vaccination.

Month 1

1. Launch the health programme: record vaccinations, treatments and inspections per group following your vet's schedule, and set reminders for the next rounds. Move sick animals to isolation so they show up in the isolation count.
2. Record mating and pregnancy: during the breeding season, record natural mating or artificial insemination, then pregnancy, so you know who is close to lambing and can prepare a pen and a worker.
3. Enter the money: record expenses (feed, medicine, wages, maintenance). Start each animal's cost from its purchase price or production cost, then expenses add up. Record every sale on the animal itself.
4. Weigh regularly: weigh a sample or the fattening group every two weeks or monthly and record the weights.

Ongoing routine

1. Check the daily operations log every evening: every action with its time and the name of the person who recorded it, so you know what was done without a single phone call.
2. Open the dashboards on the laptop: breeding hub, health, nutrition, daily operations, finance, and the feed-conversion dashboard showing average daily weight gain and the animals whose weight changed most.
3. Export reports monthly: about 20 Excel report types, for the whole farm, a group or selected animals: classification, pregnancy, newborns, deaths, isolation, drug withdrawal period, finance and sales.

Fixed routine

Before Eid al-Adha, export the classification report to see ages and weights, and check the drug withdrawal period report before any sale. When you sell, you can share the buyer version of the animal's PDF. See also preparing your flock for Eid al-Adha.

Common mistakes on farms this size

• One shared account for everyone: you cannot tell who recorded what. Fix: one account per worker with permissions by role, as explained in farm team permissions.
• App groups that do not match the pens: the count on screen differs from the count in the field. Fix: make each group a real pen and record every move. See organising pens and groups.
• Updating stages animal by animal: it falls behind and stops. Fix: change the stage of the whole group at once.
• Recording health but not money: you know what happened but not what it cost. Fix: record each expense on the day, and start cost per head from the purchase price.
• An owner who never opens the reports: the data is there but never becomes a decision. Fix: half an hour a week in front of the dashboards on the laptop.

When to move to the next stage

If you start running more than one site, if you now have managers, vets and accountants who each need a different role, or if the flock reaches several thousand head and needs reports for a board or for investors, you have moved into large-project territory. Read a 50,000-head project with Throf.

If you also run a small side unit, or know a breeder with about 50 head, the 50-head herd guide fits them better. To compare every profile, start from which Throf setup fits your farm.